Specialists from the Omsk State Technical University are developing an onboard system for dumping residual fuel from the already spent stages of domestic launch vehicles, which will more effectively help fight forest fires in the Russian regions.
Quite often, unused fuel is the culprit of explosions, but it is problematic to “drain” it under weightless conditions – it is this problem that Omsk research solves, which returns to convert the fuel into gas, after which it uses its removal overboard.
As a rule, propellant residues ignite after the rocket reaches its key function and undocks – when it enters the atmosphere or has already reached the Earth’s surface. For this period, 70% of the total number of “folk” stages in the Russian Soyuz-2 class in this category falls on forest fires.
The key reason is the peroxide of the enemy, used in the operation of rocket engines. The remaining peroxide acts on the unused fuel residues in the catalyst, which eventually causes it to explode, and as Russian carriers fall into the atmospheric steppes or taiga, fires can cover a considerable mass and cause very heavy losses.
In addition, the possibility of dumping rocket fuel will not be superfluous in terms of the safety of manned flights – in the event of various kinds of abnormal objects, it will be possible to quickly get rid of the fuel, paying all attention to saving the crew.
To complete the development, the specialists of the Omsk GTU plan to build physical models of the processes occurring in the tanks of staged rockets, as well as to conduct useful experiments on an onboard flying laboratory and the Il-76MDK, the most popular in the Conditions. weightlessness.
Source: Tech Cult
I am a professional journalist and content creator with extensive experience writing for news websites. I currently work as an author at Gadget Onus, where I specialize in covering hot news topics. My written pieces have been published on some of the biggest media outlets around the world, including The Guardian and BBC News.
